Marketing Help for Christian Coaches

Finding Your Nichel

mltch5 — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 20:51:24 +0000

The best place to start is to consider the direction has God been taking you. Your life experiences, knowledge and the skills you have developed – everything about you — is what God uses right now to bring glory to Himself as you move forward from here. Don’t discount the totality of your life. You may have come through some very difficult experiences, perhaps even crisis and trauma. But God can turn those into triumphs. He can take even the worst things in life and turn them into assets. You learned hard lessons through those tough things and even this becomes potential for your coaching business. This is the raw material of your coaching business.

God works and directs those who have a desire to be led by Him. He has a clear direction for each of us. It may not initially be big on specifics. But the direction will be made clear by the Spirit within us. How? We will have a sense that we should work with a particular group of people, advance a particular cause or work around some topic that has kept coming before us.

o “I feel compelled to work with women in midlife transition.”

o “I believe God has prepared me to work with business people.”

o “I felt the call to serve professionals who live out of suitcases most of the month”

o “I want to be involved in some way with people in the environmental movement.”

Sometimes we see a problem that needs to be addressed. If you don’t see clearly the group of people you should market your services to, you may clearly see a problem that is probably common to many of those same people.

Once we start moving in the direction that He’s unfolding to us, then God can work with us along the way. He can open doors, bring us into contact with certain people, have someone connect with us or a hundred and one other ways He might use.

Exercise 1: My Direction

Create a timeline of experiences in your life. Above the mid-line place the positive experiences. Below the mid-line place the negative experiences.

List your passions – What motivates your heart and gets your blood pumping? For example: I love working with people who want to achieve the impossible.

List your abilities or gifts – What abilities or gifts have God given you that you naturally gravitate to?

List your expertise – What topics are you an expert in or want to be an expert in?

List the nuances in your life that are unique to you? For example: I’m a leader and I don’t like it when others tell me what to do. I like to chart my own course.

What themes are emerging out of this exercise?

We suspect that God has given you that ‘one thing’ to concentrate on, around which everything else will more or less revolve. Find that one thing and you will find His purpose for you in this ‘coaching’ period of your life.

Sitemaps

mltch5 — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 20:49:55 +0000

Creating a Site Map

You may be asking, “What is a sitemap?” Well, that’s a good question if you are interested in better SEO rankings. A sitemap is a webpage that contains your website’s navigational framework. It’s an outline of your website pages. It contains major sections and subsections just like an article outline. Consolidating your website titles in their navigational hierarchy is very helpful to search engines in determining rankings.

A sitemap is also helpful to your visitors too. Just as an outline provides the writer a snapshot of the entire article, so a sitemap can be used by your visitor to scan your entire navigation very quickly.

To create a sitemap, visit www.xml-sitemaps.com. Enter your website name to generate your own sitemap. Once it’s created download the .html file to your computer. Save it in your root folder as http://www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap.html. Then upload it your server.

If you’re using WordPress, you can add a plugin to your blog. Login to your admin section of the blog. Under the plugins section, click on ADD NEW. Type in XML-Sitemap into the search box and click SEARCH. Install and activate the plug in. Once installed it should automatically update each time a page is added.

Naming Your Webpages

mltch5 — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 14:34:45 +0000

Naming Your Web Pages

If you have the typical website it consists of multiple pages with each page dedicated to a specific topic. What you “name” each page is important to search engines. For instance, names such as Page1.html, Page2.html are useless to search engines since they cannot categorize based on that type of name.

Here is an opportunity to establish relevance to a certain topic or keyword. For instance, if the topic of a particular html webpage is how to effectively communicate with teenagers consider naming that page something like this: communicationwithteens.htm or communication_with_teens.htm or communication-with-teens.htm.

Here are the Google results of searching for communication teenagers. Notice how each website names their pages. Some use dashes or underscores between words. Search engines consider dashes and underscores as spaces between words. Dashes and hyphens do aid the visitor in reading the URL but try to keep the names three words or less to help them remember your URL.

Title Tags

How you name a page and the title you give a page are two different things. The name is located in the file structure of the website and appears in the URL. The title of web page is located in the section of the page and also shows up at the top of each webpage when it is visited.

The name of each web page should be consistent, though it does not need to be exact, with the title of your page. This type of consistency helps search engines tremendously in categorizing the content.

Just as each page has its own name, each page in your website should have its own title. Search engines penalize websites with the same title on every page.

Internal Links to Your Other Pages

Internal links (links found within the content) to your other website pages should be named similar to the title of the intended page. Using the infamous click here accomplishes little in terms of SEO. However this type of link works well: For more information on this subject visit communicating with my teen. The linked page should be titled very similar to communicating with my teen.

Keywords

We’ve already covered the topic of keywords, but it behooves me to mention that your content keywords should also be similar to your page name and page title. This makes search engines happy with your site. They love consistency of topic on a webpage.

Meta Tags: Keywords & Description

Where would we be without meta tags? Well, if we were living in the 1990s your website would be lost in the vastness of the www if you didn’t have them. Times have changed and search engines no longer place as much emphasis on them. However, they are still figured into the algorithm and should not be overlooked.

Again, each page should have meta tags entered into the html head section (about 10 phrases or words) and they should be some variation of your page name, title, and the keywords within your content.

The meta description has also fallen from it’s pedestal somewhat in terms of SEO, but it remains a vital ingredient in terms of enticing visitors. Notice the description under the link to Effective Communication with Teenagers….Raising teenagers can be a challenging responsibility and one of the most important techniques…

Do you know how that sentence got there? It was placed in the meta description in the head section of the web page. Here is what it looks like:

<head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /><title>Effective Communication with Teenagerstitle><meta name="Description" content="Raising teenagers can be a challenging responsibility, and one of the most important techniques a parent can use is effective communication. " />

What better way to entice a potential customer or client to choose your company over everyone else listed?

Why Keywords Matter

mltch5 — Mon, 23 May 2011 22:00:20 +0000

Search Engines use algorithms to “categorize” and “rank” websites. As such they look to certain elements in a website. One of those elements is keywords. Keywords help the search engine connect your website to the search criteria that is entered by potential customers.

Do you know what your prospects are actually searching for when they go to Google? If you don’t know your keywords and optimize your site for them, it will be very hard for your prospects to find you.

What Keywords Should I Use?

Tip #1. Make sure you have a target market that is looking for your service, products or solution. This group of people should be willing to invest money to get what they need. If there is very little demand for your service, or people are not willing to pay for the solution, it will be hard to attract clients.

Tip #2. Use your customers’ lingo in choosing your keywords. This means you need to clearly identify your ideal customer and know what search terms they may be using to look for your business. Think: What search terms would the average customer enter as search criteria.

□ What types of questions will my customers ask?

□ What goals are they trying to accomplish?

□ What problems do they want to solve?

Tip #3. Select a combination of two to four keyword phrases instead of one-word keywords. One-word keywords tend to be more general (coaching versus executive coaching). In my research on keywords some analysts suggest using plurals and synonyms as the search engine matches the keyword phrase letter-by-letter. Other analysts seem to think that the search engines “know” accommodate plurals in the results. Our suggestion is to choose plurals. Also consider if adding -ing to the end of a keyword.

□ Start a coaching business

□ Start coach business

Tip #4. Use Google Keyword Tool to determine interest in your keyword phrases. Other keyword tools are available such as KeywordDiscovery, WordTracker, and Yahoo’s Keyword Tool.

Let’s say I’m contemplating using the keyword phrase–Start Coaching Business. It seems logical since that is the service I offer. However when I look at the Local Monthly Search column, there are not enough searches per month in the United States to warrant using that search term.

Instead I should consider using How to Start a Life Coaching Business, Life Coach Business, Starting a Life Coaching Business, Life Coaching Business and Coaching Business. They have higher stats are still relevant to my business. If I click on each of those keyword phrases, Google shows me who is ranked on the first page.

□ Is my company similar to the ones ranked on the first page? If not, you may not have the right keyword phrase.

□ These companies should be my competition.

Placing Keywords

Keywords should be placed in your Meta tags, the page name and content. If at all possible use a domain name containing your keyword.

If you have an existing website, your developer may have already listed your keywords in the Meta tag section of your website. To find out, go to your website. Right click on the page and select View Source. Look at the top of the page code. Here’s what the code looks like:

Page Title: <title>Life Coaching Business: Marketing & Mentoringtitle>

Description: <META Name=“Description” Content=“Build a Life Coaching Business with Mentoring and Marketing Support”> Keywords: <META Name=“Keywords” Content=“How to Start a Life Coaching Business, Life Coach Business, Starting a Life Coaching Business, Life Coaching Business, Coaching Business, Coaching Business Coaching. “>

If you don’t have keywords listed here, you probably don’t have them anywhere else on your site. Ask your developer to insert your keyword phrases in the code of your page title, meta description, meta keywords. Read your web page content to see if your keywords are being used. If not, rewrite your content to include them.

It sounds complicated but it’s really not. Think of the concept in terms of the Dewey Decimal System that libraries use. Your keywords help the search engines to categorize who you are. The exception being that keywords are scattered throughout your webpage instead of in one nice, tidy place.

Don’t have time to redo your keywords? We’ll do the work for you. Contact Marcie Thomas at marcie@coachingshift.com for more details. We offer consultation, coaching, development and implementation of marketing initiatives. Let us know how we can help you.

Free Advertising Online

mltch5 — Mon, 23 May 2011 21:52:50 +0000

As a solopreneur or small business owner it is important that local customers are able to easily locate you. Even if you work from home, there is some advantage to advertising your business locally. There is nothing worse than losing customers to a local competitor or hearing someone say, “I wish I knew you were here last month when I really needed you.”

You can make it extremely easy for people to find you. The web is has become the 21st century telephone book. People search for professional services and products online everyday. They search local online directories or will query their blog friends and social media platforms for advice on their problems and to make product recommendations.

Below are a few online directories where you can list your business. In addition, you’ll want to register with the specific directories that show up on the first page of Google when you search for your business online. To find those directories, visit Google.com and search for your business name, or search for your type of business and locality, your keywords, or your competitors business. A whole page of directories will show up. Be strategic by adding your business information to those directories.

Google Places: http://www.google.com/places/

Yahoo: http://local.yahoo.com/

YEXT.com: Yext is a platform that has established partners with other directories and is one central hub where you can update your listing repository listings for city search, mapquest, etc.

Facebook Places: http://www.facebook.com/places/

Yelp: http://www.yelp.com

Groupon: http://www.groupon.com. This is a coupon-based service. People subscribe to the services they are interested in. Those online coupons are sent directly to their inbox.

YellowPages: http://www.yellowpages.com

ThumbTack: http://www.thumbtack.com

Angie’s List: http://www.angieslist.com

Get access to more marketing articles at http://www.coachingshift.com/blog.

Don’t have time to register your business with all these directories? We’ll do the work for you. Contact Marcie Thomas at marcie@coachingshift.com for more details. We offer consultation, coaching, development and implementation of marketing initiatives. Let us know how we can help you.

Which e-Newsletter Service is Right For Me?

mltch5 — Mon, 23 May 2011 21:50:49 +0000

Recently, I’ve been asked to compare Constant Contact to Practice Pay Solutions in regards to e-mail list management and e-newsletter distribution.

Constant Contact is an e-list management and e-zine distribution service. They also offer a survey distribution and management option. Practice Pay Solutions is a module-based ecommerce suite of services. Modules consist of a fully integrated merchant account; e-list management, e-newsletter distribution & autoresponder service; shopping cart; digital product download system & learning management system. Since it’s module-based you can select their e-newsletter and autoresponder service separate from their other services and later choose to upgrade with their shopping cart, merchant account, etc. as your business needs change.

When determining which service is right for you, consider your short and long term goals and your technical ability: If your goals are primarily to build and stay in contact with your e-mailing list, Constant Contact will suffice. If you goals will eventually include the need to automate product sales and integrate that service with your e-mailing list, then seriously consider Practice Pay Solutions.

Here is an abridged list of features for each:

Feature	Constant Contact	Practice Pay Solutions
Predesigned web templates	Yes	No
Auto-responders	Yes (limited only 5 and not list specific)	Yes & customizable
Double optin requirement	No	Yes
Create multiple lists	Yes	Yes
Send emails to people who buy specific products	No	Yes
Option to schedule newsletters for release at a specific time	Yes	Yes
Add form to website to gather names	Yes – not customizable to website	Yes – customizable to website

For those who are not tech-savvy or who do not have a web/graphics person to create their e-newsletters, the obvious choice may become Constant Contact. The templates in Constant Contact alone may offset any small other nuisances. Plus you can take advantage of user-friendly shopping carts like PayLoadz for your shopping cart purposes. (You’ll need a PayPal account to collect the money.) Keep in mind, there is no integration between PayLoadz and Constant Contact, so you’ll need to manually add any email addresses once products are purchased.

However, for those with the ability to create their own html templates, Practice Pay Solutions offers unparalleled time management in streamlining of processes and the customization of services.

Article Marketing

mltch5 — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 19:32:29 +0000

Article Marketing

If you’re a new coach trying to build a presence online, consider article marketing as a strategy for gaining online recognition and driving traffic to your website.

How many times you have researched a topic online in the past six months? Personally, I’ve researched several topics related to web design, marketing best practices, understanding my teenager and the list goes on.

Google has become my best friend when it comes to finding information. I enter my keywords in the search box and press the return button. In a split second, hundreds of links to my subject pop into view. Some of these links are entire websites and others are articles on my subject. Most often I choose articles first. It eliminates the need to sort through an entire website to find my answer.

If the article I read was helpful, I will visit the author’s website and see what else they offer. I’m thinking, “They helped me once (building a level of trust), so how can they further assist me (they earned the opportunity to interact further with me).”

If you’re considering article marketing for the purposes of creating awareness of your services, building trust and driving traffic to your website, here are a few suggestions that will help you streamline your time.

First, identify your ideal client. What are their most pressing needs? The answer to this question easily translates into article topics or themes. What is your unique solution to those needs? Second, where is your target audience located? Are you privy to list-serves, online communities or blogs that you can participate in? It’s always better to target a captive audience when possible.

Next, choose a couple of article repositories that will accept your articles. Check out their writing specifications. Some repositories allow you to add links, italics or numbers, i.e., step 1, step 2. Others do not. Here a short list of article repositories: www.bnet.com, www.ezinearticles.com, www.buzzle.com, www.associatedcontent.com, www.articlealley.com, www.ezinefinder.com/, http://goarticles.com/, www.ideamarketers.com, www.articlebase.com, www.selfgrowth.com, www.articlesfactory.com, www.articlesnatch.com.

Clump your time. Dedicate a block of time to writing several articles at once. Then look at your calendar and schedule when they are to be released. If you can write several articles per clump you’ve freed your time and mental resources considerably.

Include a two or three-line sentence at the bottom of each article with an invitation to contact you for more information as well as a link to your website.

Schedule to release your articles once or twice a month. While articles “live forever” online, I’ve noticed visits to my website begin dropping after the second week. On average expect 20-30 visitors to your website per article.

Make sure your website has an inviting home page or landing page. Add a subscriber box to all your website pages inviting visitors to subscribe in exchange for something even more valuable than the articles they’ve read. It’s important to maintain contact with your website visitors.

Set up a tracking system to determine the success of your article marketing campaigns. Most article repositories track how often your article is viewed and the links that are visited. Using Google analytics on your website can help you narrow these statistics further. Ideally, your article marketing goals are achieved when clients visit your website.

Article marketing is not the quickest way to build a presence online but it certainly is not wasted effort. Consistent, good article writing will help build your subscriber list and showcase your expertise.

Marcie Thomas, CLC is a Christian business coach specializing in marketing for service based businesses. Join her and Gary Wood, PCC for their upcoming business building workshop at www.christiancoaches.com/eworkshop. Marcie can be found online at www.marketinghelpforchristiancoaches.

Create a Product -Audio Interview

mltch5 — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 15:03:38 +0000

Create an Interview Audio Product on Your Unique Coach Approach

In this article you’ll discover how to create an informational audio product for almost no money. Use this product to record an interview about how your coaching program is unique and effective. End the recording with an invitation to the listeners to contact you.

How to use informational interviews to benefit your coaching business:

Helps your clients gain a sense of trust in you quicker.
Audio material holds the attention of clients much longer than text.
Use it as part of your marketing funnel.
Add it to your media portfolio.
Transcribe it into an ebook.
Leave a copy of your CD with a potential client.

You will need the following:

1. Reserve a free telephone line at http://www.freeconferencecall.com. Instructions on how to record, stop recording and how to download the recording are provided when you register.

2. Obtain audio editing software called Wavepad at http://nchswiftsound.com. The cost is about $60. Alternately, download audio editing software for free at http://www.audacity.sourceforge.net. If you create a perfect interview recording, you will not need an editor for this purpose. Please note that an hour of recording time will create a file at about 25 mb. That’s a large file. Not too large to download, but too large to send through email. If you need to reduce the size, you will need an audio editor.

3. Select a friend to call into the phone line and ask you the interview questions.

4. Reserve a quiet place free from other telephones, outside noises, dogs, children. Turn down your computer speakers before commencing the recording.

After the recording is finished, simply download the recording to your computer. Once you have the audio on your computer, you can edit it and/or upload it to your website. You can even create a CD. Most computers allow you to burn a CD pretty easily and for free.

Here is a possible interview format. Please revise as you deem necessary:

Introduction: Hello everyone I’m ______. We are here today with __________ to discuss the topic of the __________. Person’s name is an expert in _______________, or whatever the client is looking to achieve.

What would you say the real challenges are being faced by ____________?Are there current solutions being offered? How effective are they?
What has been the traditional way of solving the problem? How effective have traditional solutions been?
What is key about your approach? Why has your solution proven more effective?
How does this model prove its effectiveness?
So tell me in a step by step fashion how you work with _____________?
What are the obstacles (and the rewards) that you clients might face as they consider these changes?
What are the rewards of your approach?
We hear a lot about coaching these days. In what ways does (personal coaching help the client?) your personal coaching program accelerate the client forward?
Tell us one more time what clients are missing out on if they don’t take action on this problem?
What should those interested listeners (in contacting you for more information) do next?
Thanks for taking the time to share your expertise with us. Please remind listeners where they can find out more information and contact you.

Thanks for taking time to visit with us today. We commend you for the good work you are doing.

End of interview

SPECIAL OFFER

Would you like for someone else to take the lead in creating your own informational interview? Save time by letting us help. We offer this service for $250. This price includes the phone line, an interviewer, 1 hour of recording time and 70 minutes of editing time to remove hmms, long pauses, sentence restarts. The final product is an mp3 delivered to your email box or placed on a webpage for you to download or burn to a CD at your convenience.

10 Ways to Build Your Email List

mltch5 — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 23:47:44 +0000

Ten Ways to Build Your Email List

Offer a webinar or teleseminar with someone who has a large list; make the offer sweet to the person hosting the list with an affiliate fee.

Add a squeeze page or landing page and direct visitors specifically to that page. It keeps them from being detracted by the rest of your website.

Submit articles to ezines and include your bio at the end with a link to your site or squeeze page.

Join an online group like Facebook or LinkedIn. Post comments, direct interested parties to your site.

Promote an ebook only accessible by email.

Place an ad that promotes your product.

When speaking, make an offer for more information or freebie in exchange for business card. Add email address to your list.

Purchase a list.

Sponsor a survey about a popular problem and make the results known via email exchange.

Bottom line: Set a goal and be intentional about building your list. Create time on a weekly basis dedicated to building your list.

Life Coaches Solve Problems

mltch5 — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 16:32:17 +0000

Are you having problems finding paying clients? Does your target audience know that you can solve their problems? People pay to get problems solved. Therefore, coaches need to position marketing messages in terms of being the expert in solving their ideal client’s problems.

People will spend money when they need something that they historically have not been able to achieve on their own. If you hope to serve people and make an income by doing so, you must understand their problems, needs and wants. There are good reasons for identifying their needs:

o You’ll get results when you market to them. After all you are going to present the solution they are looking for, the step by step process to achieve it and the coaching support to make it happen.

o You’ll connect with them easier. They want to be coached by someone who understands them and someone to whom they can relate. There is no deeper level to relate at than sharing a common problem and desire for a solution.

o Specializing earns more respect and money than being a generalist. Why? Because you are seen as the expert in a well defined area addressing a specific problem. That sets you apart from all others.

o Clients want results and seek answers from those most likely to deliver.

If you don’t already know what that problem/need/want is and how it affects your ideal client, take the time to find out. We help coaching entrepreneurs do just that in our From the FoundationsUP business building program for new coaches. Classes start January 4^th, 2011. This 10-week intensive program is designed to help you succeed in launching and growing your new coaching business.

Download our business building tools and find out more about the program at http://www.christiancoaches.com/eworkshop/free.htm.

If you are looking for a coach to help you solve problems, find a qualified, ethical, experienced coach at the Christian Coaches Network. These professionals work across a broad spectrum of specialties and bring a wealth of experience and expertise to your coaching call. We’re online at http://www.christiancoaches.com.

The FoundationsUp team is here to help. Gary Wood, CMCC, PCC and Marcie Thomas, CLC have a combined total of 30 years experience in business building, marketing, growth and startup. Their #1 passion is helping new Christian coaches solidly launch their businesses and begin to make an impact in society through their coaching efforts.